Response Of The . . .

Frequent cloud cover is a major environmental constraint to optical remote sensing studies in Arctic locations, including studies based on ground or aircraft observations. The objective of this study was to determine how cloud induced variations in solar illumination affect the normalized difference...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: A. S. Hope, K. R. Pence, D. A. Stow
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 1999
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.11.5554
http://nrm.salrm.uaf.edu/~dverbyla/nrm641/readings/arctic_clouds.pdf
Description
Summary:Frequent cloud cover is a major environmental constraint to optical remote sensing studies in Arctic locations, including studies based on ground or aircraft observations. The objective of this study was to determine how cloud induced variations in solar illumination affect the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of representative vegetation types on the North Slope of Alaska. Illumination conditions were quanti ed using a cloud index (incident shortwave radiation at the surface divided by radiation at the top of the atmosphere). The results indicated that the NDVI was stable across a wide range of cloud index values, particularly when the value exceeded 0.5. It is concluded that a cloud index threshold may be used to select unbiased NDVI values from a data set collected under varying illumination conditions.